


She Only Reveals What She Wants You to See

by Amadi



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Community: lgbtfest, F/M, Queer Themes, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-16
Updated: 2009-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:12:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amadi/pseuds/Amadi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've been together for two years. Now Donna's dropped a bombshell on Josh. What's next?</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Only Reveals What She Wants You to See

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 2009 [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/lgbtfest/profile)[**lgbtfest**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/lgbtfest/) in response to Prompt #1433. _Of all the things Donna's neglected to tell Josh, born-a-boy is high on the list. He's freaked this means he's gay. She's freaked that she seems to be straight._
> 
> Thank you to [](http://www.journalfen.net/users/atanvarne/profile)[**atanvarne**](http://www.journalfen.net/users/atanvarne/) and [](http://jackandahat.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**jackandahat**](http://jackandahat.dreamwidth.org/) for beta.
> 
> **Disclaimer:** These characters and this universe belong to Aaron Sorkin, John Wells and NBC/Universal television. No claim of ownership or control is implied via this work of fan fiction.

When the door slammed behind Josh, Donna stood and stared, she didn't know for how long. And then, she panicked.

She knew that she could leave too, but there really wasn't anywhere safe to go. She couldn't go to the White House, not in a panic, not even to the gym. If she was in the building, she was fair game, and she was in no shape to work right now.

She was too distracted to go for a run, she knew she'd probably end up crushed by a cab taking a shortcut down a quiet K Street. "First Lady's Chief Staffer Killed in Accident" was not the headline she craved.

She couldn't go back to her apartment, now hers only in name; Lou Thornton hadn't been so thrilled the last time Donna had to go back on a Sunday morning (to find her heavy duty Minnesota-style parka before a blizzard). Lou, like Josh, had a Sunday morning ritual. Unlike Josh, she wasn't able to find room to include Donna in said ritual. But why would she?

No, there was no where for Donna to go, so she stayed. And in pure Donna form, she channeled her nerves and her fear into cleaning. She scrubbed the place from ceilings to floors, dusted the door frames and inside the lighting fixtures, vacuumed every carpet, and all the furniture. She sanitized the bathroom with bleach, scrubbed the grout. She tackled the kitchen, going so far as to soak the knobs of the stove in soapy water and scrub the gaskets on the refrigerator doors, and Josh still hadn't come back. She reorganized her closet and put together a bag for charity. She took out the garbage and the recycling. She was just about to start washing windows when finally, finally she heard his key in the lock.

She was a mess, sweaty and grimy, hair falling out of a haphazard ponytail, a pair of cutoff sweatpants rolled up around her knees. The threadbare t-shirt of Josh's that she'd appropriated was stuck to her skin in uncomfortable ways. She wanted to run and hide in the shower, get herself together and make herself look presentable, but there was no time. He stood in the doorway and stared at her for long enough that the ticking of the clock on the wall was drowned out by the sound of her own heart, pounding in her ears.

"You're still here," he observed. Finest mind in Washington, D.C.

"There was no where else to go. I... I cleaned."

Josh looked around, but didn't notice the changes, didn't smell the lavender that replaced the eau de takeaway food that usually hung in the air. "Oh."

"Josh, I --"

"Donna, I don't know what to say. Or do. I've been... I went driving. I ended up in Charlottesville." That was five hours, round trip. Josh had been gone for nearly twice that long.

Donna tucked herself in a corner of the sofa, knees pulled up under her chin, quiet when she spoke."Say whatever you want to say, Josh."

He shrugged out of his coat and dropped his bag on the chair -- trust Josh to take his laptop with him when he stormed out after a fight with his lover -- and ran hands through his hair. "Okay, here's what I want to say. Why in hell didn't you tell me this at some point before 7:13 this morning, Donna? That's what I want to say. That's all I want to know."

If he'd gotten loud, she could've handled it. But this resigned Josh, breathing evenly as he dropped down on the other end of the sofa, he scared her.

"I don't -- I never felt like it was the right time. When should I have told you, Josh?" Maybe at some point before they had sex, she's sure, but they've had sex. They've had a lot of sex in the past 28 months. Good sex, _intimate_ sex, and he's apparently had no clue, didn't believe it when she said the words, said them twice, this morning.

"How about in Manchester?" He remembered the way she looked, half-tentative, half-brassy assurance as she tried to convince him that she was the assistant he needed, when no one else had one yet except Leo. She drove herself to South Carolina behind the campaign bus, and would've slept in it, had Josh not persuaded C.J. to let Donna have the second bed in her room.

"And if I'd told you in Manchester, everything would've been different," Donna protests, quietly, evenly. "I wouldn't have been there another hour. You barely knew my full name in Manchester. It wasn't the time to tell you. And there wasn't a right time after that. You were my boss."

"Until I wasn't any more," Josh pointed out. "Of course, you weren't really talking to me then."

"No, I wasn't," Donna smiled a little as she remembered how glad she was when _that_ ridiculous period was over. "I thought maybe you found out in Germany."

"I could barely get them to tell me that you were still breathing, if I wasn't right there in the room with you." Josh shook his head as if to push the images away. Some of the worst days of his life, and that counts the days after Rosslyn. (At least then he was heavily medicated.) "They wouldn't have told me. Would they even have known?"

"It's in my medical records, the full history, and my medication." She was assured that it was all pro forma, that when the CoDel ended and she was home "safe and sound" the medical dossier that was created to go along with her on the trip would be destroyed. She wondered now and again what happened to it, since safe and sound didn't happen, if that blue packet was in a filing cabinet somewhere. "The Secret Service knew, from my security screenings. Ron Butterfield hated it, he always gave me the nastiest looks. He hated that I was able to get clearance to work so closely to the president, like I'd taint him or something."

"He never said a word to me, Donna. Not a single word." In the moment, it seemed important to Josh, urgent even, that he reassure her of that. "Does Helen know?"

"No, people in my work life don't find out about this unless someone who _has_ to know outs me." Donna gestured emphatically, a chopping hand as if to strike a death blow to the very idea. "That's why you never knew when we worked together. It was a personal thing. It's not a work thing. It has no impact on my professional life."

Josh was quiet for a long time thinking about that, mulling and understanding the reasons why she's drawn that line. He got it, in his head, but somewhere in his heart, he still felt like she'd left him out in a very uncomfortable cold. "Okay, but how about since we've been sleeping together?" His voice finally rose a notch, the emotion nearly causing it to break.

"You're right, I needed to tell you, _then_. It was unfair of me to keep it from you." Donna admitted, not quite able to look at him. "But tell me when. Honestly and truly, tell me when?!" That was the cue for her heart to get involved, her strong conviction that she _is_ the woman that he's always known came to the fore and pushed aside her contrition over keeping the secret from him.

"Do you remember the conversation we had after the first night that I came here? Do you remember what I sat over there," she nodded toward the dining table, "and said to you? About our being together?"

"That we needed to figure out what we wanted quickly because... yeah." Josh's tone flattened again and he nodded, not looking at her either, not really.

"And it was just like I said, wasn't it? Transition, first one hundred days, the hearing about San Andreo, the OPEC crisis, then Dreifort announces his retirement and Mulready dies out of the blue," Donna ticked off the list one by one on her fingers. "Then the stock market and the farm bill, and then it was the midterms, just like I said, and now we're maybe four months from starting to campaign again and you're trying to get an energy bill passed and we get to have a real conversation maybe once a week, twice if we get lucky, and honestly Josh... when could it have come up and been dealt with properly?"

Josh wondered if _this_ was "dealing with it" and if it met the criteria for "proper." With a sigh he stood and went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. The door started to close but he caught it and reached in to snag a bottle for Donna as well. He snicked the caps off and left them on the spotless countertop, then procrastinated, drinking quietly for several long minutes before he returned to the living room and held Donna's bottle toward her.

"No thank you." She demurred with a shake of her head. More fine blonde hair escaped from her ponytail. She ignored it.

Josh set the bottle on the table in front of her. She pulled out a coaster and slipped it under the bottle and slid another down the table toward him. "I just cleaned. There are no month old copies of the _Post_ to keep your bottle from ringing the wood."

"I noticed. It's nice. I'll trash the bottlecaps, I promise."

"I'm not worried about that."

"You're constantly surprising me, you know." Josh shook his head again as he looked at the gleaming coffee table, carefully polished by his lover's hand. He glanced over to see them, her hands, graceful long fingers, nails painted a shade she once told him was called Ivory Pearl.

"You surprised me too, right from the beginning. Falling for you shook up my entire world." Donna admitted. She picked up her bottle but didn't drink, she just fidgeted with it, picked at the label.

"Oh yeah? How so?" That's not what Josh expected to hear.

"By being a man," Donna reminded him. _That_ aspect of her past, her dating women pretty exclusively before packing up her trusty Subaru and driving to Manchester on a whim, has been discussed rather thoroughly. "And I guess 'being a man' is where this all started, huh?"

Josh slid down the sofa and looked at Donna, his quirky, silly, brilliant and beloved Donna. A lot of thoughts went through his mind today, but they all came right back to her. He took the bottle from her and entwined their fingers and lifted her hand to kiss the soft skin. "Whatever you are, whatever you will be, whatever you have been, Donnatella Moss, you were never a man."


End file.
